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This essay will explore the moral and ethical issues raised by human
superiority over animals, why we shouldn’t have any superiority, and
how this subject is portrayed in a variety of different media. The
world today is becoming less aware of the pain and suffering being
inflicted on animals. As a result, animals are becoming even more and
more downtrodden in society. Humans have, and continue to, treat
animals as if they are property, as if we can own and therefore control
their lives and what happens to them.
This is immoral, animals are here
for themselves, animals have their own lives, and they think, have
feelings, feel pain, require love (from their own species), feel
emotional hurt, have families, and everything else that humans do. To
just simply say that non-human animals should have no rights because
they’re “defective” is a mindless statement! People come to this
“conclusion” because they come up with some mindless babble like,
non-human animals can’t talk, drive cars or vote, therefore they have
no non-tradable properties. Well answer me this; do non-human animals
have the right to exist in their natural environment and express
behaviours that matter to them? We withhold non-human animals the very
basic rights, simply because they don’t resemble humans. Humans are
speciest!
Humans are callous, brutal and cold-blooded towards non-human
animals; humans have no consideration for the feelings and suffering
which they selfishly inflict on animals. When a human kills another
human they are the disgrace of the country, the headlines in the news,
and all they did was kill one human, one insignificant human life. Yet,
no one seems to care that everyday billions upon billions of innocent
animals are being sickeningly, nauseatingly, hideously, vilely,
unanaesthetically murdered for meat. If you think the process of that
cute cow in the field to the steak on your plate is all candy and
roses, then here is an extract from a very informative article on the
way in which an animal is killed to become meat, (something that humans
have no nutritional requirement for!).
“Death came in the form of a pneumatic nail gun that was placed
against their heads and fired. The gun is designed so that the nail
never completely leaves the gun, but simply is blown into the animal's
head and then pulled out by the butcher as the animal collapses. Three
of the four times I saw it used, it did the job on the first try, but
one cow struggled a good deal after collapsing. After the animal has
collapsed (but still conscious), the side of the killing stall is
raised, and a chain is secured to the right hind leg. The cow is then
hoisted by that one leg to a hanging position. At this point, the
butcher drains the body of blood by slitting the cow's throat. When the
blood vessels are severed, there is an amazing torrent of blood so
profuse that the butcher is unable to step aside fast enough to avoid
being covered with it. This steaming torrent of blood lasts only about
15 seconds, after which the only task left to the man at the first
station is to skin and remove the animal's head.
At the second station in the kill shed, the headless animal is
dropped to the floor. The body is propped up on the back and relieved
of hooves and, if female, milk sack and udders. At this time, any urine
and faeces that didn't drain from the body during the first few seconds
of death now pour freely onto the floor. The body is then slit down the
middle, and the hide is peeled partially away. A yoke is then hooked to
the stumps of the hind legs, the body is lifted upwards, and the rest
of the hide is pulled past a roller secured to the floor and peeled
off. The animal's body is now at the third station of the kill shed
where it is gutted and then sawed in half -- becoming two "sides of
beef".
The sides of beef are sprayed down and weighed at the fourth and
final station of the kill station. They are then placed in the cooling
locker where the residual warmth of life steams away slowly in
preparation for the deep-freeze storage locker. From the cooling
locker, the meat goes into a main storage area where it is kept for as
long as a week. This locker exits to a butchering area where the sides
of beef are reduced to parts for the supermarket which end up on dining
room tables. The final stop on my tour was the sausage and hot dog
production facilities. It is often said that if you could see what goes
into a hot dog, you'd never eat one eat one again. Well that adage
applies tenfold to the production of sausage. The most violently
nauseating smell that I have ever experienced was the odour wafting up
from the sausage meat boiling vats.” – Taken from the article, A Visit
to a Slaughterhouse: by Dave Gifford, www.meat.org.
Now if you can read that and still eat meat, then that proves the
point. Humans are heartless! The very fact that the person dismembering
the cow can slit it’s throat while the animal is still alive, without
feeling even a trace of guilt or sorrow, shows that person to be
heartless. Humans think that animals are on the earth to be products of
human greed and gluttony. We cram them into boxes and cages, let them
lie in their own waste, crippled, swollen, deformed; and shovel them,
drag them, chain them, like their worthless pieces of junk with no
individual non-tradable value or interests.
An interesting issue raised in the novel, ‘Black Beauty’, is that of
working animals. Black Beauty is a pre-20th century novel, about the
life of one horse. The life of this horse was written to show the
inhumane way in which horses were being treated. They were treated like
slaves. Their attitude towards their horses is as if the horses have no
interest of their own, they only live to work for humans. Take a look
at this novel extract:
“Then there is the steam-engine style of driving; these drivers were
mostly people from town, who never had a horse of their own, and
generally travelled by rail. They always seemed to think that a horse
was something like a steam engine, only smaller. At any rate, they
think that if only they pay for it, a horse is bound to go just as far,
and just as fast, and with just as heavy a load as they please. And be
the roads heavy and muddy, or dry and good; be they stony or smooth,
up-hill or downhill, it is all the same-on, on, one must go at the same
pace, with no relief and no consideration. These people never think of
getting out to walk up a step hill. Oh, no, they have paid to ride, and
ride they will! The horse? Oh, he’s used to it! What were horses made
for, if not to drag people up-hill? Walk! A good joke indeed! And so
the whip is plied and the rein is chucked, and often a rough scolding
voice cries out, ‘Go along, you lazy beast!’ And then another slash of
the whip, when all the time we were doing our very best to get along,
uncomplaining and obedient, though often sorely harassed and
downhearted.” – page 104, chapter 29 (cockneys), Black Beauty.
This shows the way in which humans think of animals. It shows that
humans believe animals to be equipment, machines that they can work
into the ground, after all, they have no non-tradable properties, they
are only here to serve us, if they weren’t used, then what would be the
use of them! What babble, non-human animals exist in the same way we
do, for their own interests, they are of the same value as us, they are
not our “equipment”.
In the bible, it says;
“Then God said let us make man in our image … and let him have
dominion over fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and over the
cattle … and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth…” –
Genesis 1:28, The Bible
So many people mix this statement up, their like why should animals
have rights, god doesn’t say they should! Well in the bible, it doesn’t
say that we have the right to work the hell out of them, run them into
the ground, brutally murder them, bash them, rape them, maim them! It’s
just like the way parents have domain over their children, they hold no
right to use their children their children as tools, and they have no
right to abuse them. It means they have the responsibility to care for
them.
The film ‘Andre’ shows us that humans can have wonderful harmonious
relationships with non-human animals, like the love and respect that a
dog and a human can have when they both learn to respect each other.
But more often than not, the relationship between animals is far from
harmonious. I’m talking about abused companion animals. No you do NOT
own them, you are just simply their caretaker. When people buy pets on
impulse, one day they want one, and then they get sick of caring for
it, and it gets neglected, which is abuse of the emotional kind.
The novel, Musco – Blue Whale, raises another issue of humans using
non-humans to their advantage. It raises the issue of whaling, a
disgusting practice for human profit in meat, oil, bone and baleen.
Used for things as vain as make-up, yes that’s right, millions of
whales are murdered to make useless cosmetics, vain and heartless! This
book shows man in his most arrogant state, it shows that humans will
stop at nothing, they don’t care if it involves the ruthless torture of
non-human animals, as long as their profiting then they don’t care.
So as all the sources show, humans are heartless and speciest. The
way in which humans treat non-human animals needs drastic changing; we
should not be exploiting them for any reason at all. There are not here
to serve us, they are here for there own purposes. One final question
for you to consider; “If possessing a higher degree of intelligence
does not entitle one human to use another for his own ends, how can it
entitle humans to exploit non-humans?”
Sewell, A. (1877) Black Beauty, United States of America: Nancy Springer
Smith, V. (1943) Musco – Blue Whale, Maryborough, Vic: Hedges & Bell Pty. Ltd
Andre (1996)
Gifford, D. (2001) “meat is murder”, URL: http://www.meat.org/
Pyers, G & Gott, R. (1994) “Treated like animals”, The
relationships between people and animals, Carlton, Vic: CIS publishers
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